I suggest people check out http://unroll.me/ It is great for condensing all the newsletters you may or may not have subscribed to
I don’t need your newsletter
11–20 of 27 posts
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#12Here's a secret: they continue to use email marketing because it works.
By "works", I think you mean "brings in more revenue than it costs" aka is profitable. But I think the author brings up a point that it may be hurting the brand unknowingly. just because you can put someone on an email campaign for years because it is super cheap, doesn't mean you are conveying your message well or building a loyal customer. And don't get me started on list sharing.
Even in terms of conversion rates. Talk to anyone with a good, optimized email marketing campaign. You'll hear that email out performs every other type of traffic. Yeah, maybe some of these companies aren't doing it right, but it seems like the author was just pissed she couldn't unsubscribe.
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#13have you tried pressing the "spam" button? I find that most of these "newsletters" stop arriving in my inbox after I do that (with my gmail account).
If I did not explicitly subscribe to a newsletter, I will hit the SPAM button. I do not care if I completed a transaction with the sender, spam is spam. I don't bother with the unsubscribe links.
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#14I once got into trouble with one of these unwanted newsletters. A design agency in Argentina was doing the mass mailing their work to design blog authors in an effort to spread the word about the work they had done. It was a fairly large agency with big clients, one of those clients was Unilever.
I started by requesting to be removed from the list, this went well for a couple of weeks, but then (some intern, I suppose) would pick it up again and put it in their database. I got tired of this game and marked it as spam, but somehow it was still going through my inbox. By the fourth time this happened, I grew angry, so I thought about a way to get the message through that their emailing tactics weren't welcome.
I searched through LinkedIn for the highest level of Unilever I could find, and I struck gold: I got the email of the VP of Marketing of Unilever for Argentina. I wrote him an email, with cc to the owner of the Argentinian agency. I wrote to him as if he was a friend, something along the lines of...
Dear *****
Your design agency in Argentina, *****, has been spamming
me about the work that they have done for Unilever. I
wouldn't like to have my brand associated with such seedy
marketing tactics. If I were you, I would drop them as a
provider. Please take care good friend.
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#15If you're trying to market your product, there is nothing as powerful and successful as email. Yeah, your crappy newsletter will probably just get deleted by 95% of people who get it, but the cost/benefit is still in your favor. If you want to be a success in business, sometimes you have to take off your "indignant customer" hat and put on your "trying to make a sale" hat. Don't be a jerk to your customers, and make…
Subscribing a customer to an e-mail newsletter that they didn't ask for is being a jerk to your customers. You might get a few extra sales, but for every sale you get you'll also get a bunch of customers who think you're an annoying spammer and will want nothing more to do with you.
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#16When giving out your email to a website, change the email slightly using a + sign like this: "+@domain.com". The email will still get to you but when they share it with affiliates you'll at least know who shared it.
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#17I've run (and currently publish) newsletters. They are one of the best converting tools you can use for almost any business. Seriously. If you have not reasearched it you may be throwing away thousands of dollars in sales.
You do have to be very smart about using them. Here are some pointers (note that this is being included in a Marketing Bit (check my profile):
1. Cold newsletters are not for every market. When I mean cold, I refer to those newsletters that get sent out with the permission granted by the terms of service of other services. But do realize that they do work and should be explored by some markets. If you are worried about emailing people cold, then buy your way into another newsletter and have people subscribe. This is still a cold contact, but allows for inclusion into your sales funnel.
2. Newsletters are not emails. They are more close to magazines and newspapers than email. If you publish a newsletter, don't send out a wall of text. Include other media. The amount depends on the market. Test.
3. You don't need to always talk about one general subject. My best converting newsletters have always included subjects not related to the newsletter at all. Note that this varies by market. If you publish a classifieds newsletter then dont drown people with content. Do include a little joke, word of the day, wisdom quote, or similar. Keep it tidy.
4. Design matters a lot. Hire a designer for this one, and test the results. Mail Chimp has a very handy in browser WYSIWYG that you definitely check out. It work beatifully.
5. Keep a 2:1 ratio (at least) of content/advertisements (if you run ads). Or else it will drown the content.
If you want to learn more about newsletters, I'm about to publish a news Marketing Bit about them. Check out my github (github/orangethirty) to read it.
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#18When giving out your email to a website, change the email slightly using a + sign like this: " + @domain.com". The email will still get to you but when they share it with affiliates you'll at least know who shared it.
This doesn't work with all email services.
The only one I know of is Google. So gmail and private email hosted by Google Apps. Anyone know of other email services that work this way?
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#19have you tried pressing the "spam" button? I find that most of these "newsletters" stop arriving in my inbox after I do that (with my gmail account).
If I did not explicitly subscribe to a newsletter, I will hit the SPAM button. I do not care if I completed a transaction with the sender, spam is spam. I don't bother with the unsubscribe links.
I do both. Most companies respect unsubscribe requests and those that persist get blacklisted. This seems like an an easy problem to solve; not sure that it warrants a 650 word blog post.
Re: I don’t need your newsletter
#20The email newsletter is a medium. It's often abused, but that's not the fault of the medium. Saying all newsletters are useless is a lot like saying all books are useless. Are there terrible books? Yes. Are there terrible newsletters? Yes. But there are great ones too.
I operate a design newsletter related to my ebook. It's a great way to earn sales, but it's also a great way to facilitate discussions about design.
The newsletters I enjoy most are written for a very specific, narrow audiences. They're nothing like the massive retail email ads the author mentions.